As is known in the art, collaborative systems refer to a class of systems in which multiple users participate in a particular activity (e.g. a business meeting, a meeting to solve an engineering problem, a lecture, etc. . . . ).
As is also known, the emergence of high speed communication networks and improved visualization techniques has laid the foundation for making such computer based collaboration practical. Various collaboration tools and conferencing systems have been developed by academic institutions, office system manufacturers and communication companies.
The literature is rich with research in the area of computer mediated communication. The work spans multiple disciplines and three diverse focus areas have been identified as emerging in this research field: (1) Electronic Meeting Systems(EMS); (2) Video Conferencing; and (3) Shared social spaces. Each of these groups represents a different approach to computer mediated communication.
EMS research focuses on the meeting process and decision support tools for the meeting process. Video conferencing research is concerned with transmitting multi-media data between participants (esp. audio and video data). The shared social spaces perspective is concerned with enabling interaction and experience across distance and providing awareness and persistence within a virtual world.
Electronic meeting systems encompasses a large body of research dedicated to the support of participants in traditional meeting settings. The GroupSystems EMS and the Xerox Parc Collab project are among the first such systems developed. Both systems have tools that structure brainstorming and problem solving processes and enforce interaction controls on the participants within the shared media. However, the control of floor in discussion is governed by regular meeting norms since all participants are co-located. It has been found that some of these additional process structuring constraints on the collaboration are not necessary and may decrease satisfaction within the workgroup.
Initial research on video conferencing focused on the technical aspects of transmitting video and audio data among individuals. Much of the initial work was constrained to two-person interactions and a large portion of the work utilized a telephony paradigm for the interaction. Further developments have occurred rapidly in this field and most modern systems such as Microsoft NetMeeting, Intel Proshare, PictureTel, and SGI Inperson provide multi-person interaction and have extended audio and video services to include shared whiteboards, editors and browsers. However, these conferencing systems lack any appropriate concurrency control mechanisms and are cumbersome to use for group work.
The final area of research in telepresence is devoted to the study of virtual communities and interaction in a virtual environment. Several tools have been developed to provide awareness, persistence, and interaction in cyberspace. The two leading research efforts in this field are TeamRooms and Worlds. The primary concern of these systems is in the representation of physical concepts of space and place in the virtual world. The environments developed provide richer interaction contexts, but are currently constrained by network bandwidth and display technology.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system which allows individuals to hold meetings over the internet and work together in a coordinated fashion on shared design problems. It would also be desirable to have a system which provides automated facilitation services, which supports a variety of meeting structures and which provides floor control policies to dynamically control the transition of the speaking state (the floor) from one participant to another (floor control policies).